The Long Journey to Jake Palmer by James L. Rubart Read Free Book Online

light rain started as Jake slogged from his Jeep to the front door of his home in north Bothell. As he reached for the doorknob, his phone vibrated and he glanced at the caller ID. Peter.
    Jake answered and said, “Yes, I’m thinking about it.”
    “Stop thinking, Clark, and tell me you’re coming.”
    Jake sighed, opened his door, and stepped into his entryway. “Is this the ten millionth or twenty millionth time I’ve told you to stop calling me Clark?”
    “You didn’t actually tell me just now.” Peter’s booming laugh plowed through the phone. “Say those two simple words. You can do it, I know you can. I’m. Going. ”
    “May. Be.” Jake set his briefcase down and flicked on a light.
    “Nice progress, Clark! In four days you’ve moved from not going to maybe .”
    “Yeah.”
    “Listen, Jake. I know you’ve lost a lot in the past year and a half. Don’t lose us too.”
    “I’ll let you know soon, one way or the other.”
    Jake hung up and the silence of his house struck him like a hammer as it did every night. He should start leaving music on, but that’s what Sienna did before she left; it would only remind him of how alone he was.
    He flicked on a few more lights, set his briefcase on the kitchen counter, and went to his bedroom to get into gym shorts and a T-shirt. Jake did a fast weight workout for his upper body in the guest bedroom he’d converted into an exercise room. After a quick shower, he dried off and tried to avoid looking in the mirror but failed. From the top of his head to three inches above his belly button, he was still Sienna’s Adonis. But everything below that point more closely resembled Dante’s Inferno .
    He couldn’t even see his belly button unless he looked hard. What the doctors called skin grafts were mixtures of violent reds, dark pinks, and tiny charred swirls still black as night nineteen months later. A tapestry of grotesque blotches—browns, reds, splashes of albino white—wrapped his legs, his ankles, and his feet like a lava flow of real-life horror.
    Jake ripped his gaze away, breathing more heavily than at any time during his short workout. He eased back into his bedroom, dressed, then ambled toward the kitchen to get dinner. But he found himself stepping into the darkness of his den.
    He flicked on the light. On his bookshelf was a photo of him and Peter atop Mount Rainier. But he was drawn to the framed photos that lined the wall to the right of the door. Five pictures taken each fall at the finish of an Ironman triathlon.
    Jake glared at the photos, ticked off at them, yet still not able to take them down and donate them to the local garbage heap. His gaze settled on the picture on top: his first Ironman. Boise, Idaho. The only goal in that race was to finish. He’d grown a beard that summer as he trained and didn’t shave it off till he finished the race. Jake shook his head as he recalled the ugly thatch of black hair surrounding his mouth. But such triumph had shined in his eyes, and his arms were stretched over his head as if he could reach the heavens.
    He’d never come close to winning in his age groups, thirty to thirty-four, and then thirty-five to thirty-nine, but that had never been the point. The goal was always to better his previous year’s time. The goal was to push his body beyond what it thought it could do. The goal was to force his body into submission so it would be in a condition to allow him to conquer any mountain, figurative or literal. The discipline gave his life meaning, and it was one area where the only person he had to be good enough for was himself.
    But now there would never be two more photos to complete the set. He’d promised himself seven Ironmans, but he wouldn’t be keeping that vow. Nor the ones he made about climbing Kilimanjaro. Or riding across America on a bike. Or a thousand other dreams he’d told himself would come true. He was lucky he could walk, the doctors had said.
    Jake continued to stare at the